title: Isolation and culture of mouse proepicardium using serum-free conditions.
abstract: The proepicardium (PE) is an embryonic tissue that gives rise to multipotent vascular progenitors. Most notably the PE gives rise to the epicardium, cardiac fibroblasts, myocardium, and coronary vessels including both vascular smooth muscle and vascular endothelium. Much attention has been given to epicardial-derived cells that show the capacity to differentiate into a wide variety of vascular progenitors including cardiomyocytes. However, it is the PE itself that possesses the greatest potential as a source of multipotent vascular progenitors. We show here a simple method to manually isolate mouse PE at the ninth day of mouse embryonic development and culture highly pure PE tissue in serum-free conditions. This PE culture method allows for the ex vivo analysis of specific growth factors on PE and epicardial development with greater efficiency and precision than existing epicardial culture methods.
authors.affiliation: Cancer and Developmental Biology Laboratory, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute-Frederick, National Institutes of Health, Frederick, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Garriock
authors.affiliation: Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mikawa
authors.affiliation: Cancer and Developmental Biology Laboratory, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute-Frederick, National Institutes of Health, Frederick, MD, USA. Electronic address: yamagute@mail.nih.gov.
authors.forename: Terry P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Yamaguchi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D046149:Embryo Culture Techniques; D047108:Embryonic Development; D051379:Mice; D039902:Multipotent Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology; D010496:Pericardium / Q000166:cytology / Q000254:growth & development*; D046509:Tissue Culture Techniques
keywords: Cardiovascular; Mouse; Proepicardium; Progenitor cell culture; Stem cells